That man bears arms against the Church; he fights against the appointment of God. An enemy of the altar, a rebel against the sacrifice of Christ, treacherous instead of faithful, sacrilegious instead of religious, a disobedient servant, an impious son, a hostile brother—despising the bishops and forsaking the priests of God, he dares to set up another altar, to make another prayer with unlawful words, to profane the truth of the Lord's offering by false sacrifices; and he does not know that whoever strives against the ordinance of God is punished by divine chastisement for the audacity of his rashness. So Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who attempted to claim for themselves, against Moses and Aaron the priest, the liberty of sacrificing, straightway paid the penalties for their attempts.
The earth, its bonds broken asunder, opened its bosom into the deep; the gaping chasm of the receding ground swallowed them up as they stood and lived; and the wrath of the indignant God struck not only those who had been the instigators, but also the other two hundred and fifty partners and companions of that same madness, who, banded together with them, had alike been brought to such audacity—a fire going forth from the Lord consumed them with hastened vengeance, admonishing and showing that whatever the wicked attempt by human will to destroy the ordinance of God is done against God.
So too King Uzziah, when, bearing the censer and violently usurping to himself a sacrifice against the law of God, he was unwilling, though the priest Azariah resisted him, to obey and to yield, was confounded by divine indignation and stained on his forehead with the blotch of leprosy—marked in that part of the body, the Lord being offended, where those are signed who win the Lord's favor. And the sons of Aaron, who laid upon the altar strange fire which the Lord had not commanded, were straightway extinguished in the sight of the avenging Lord. These, to be sure, they imitate and follow who, despising the tradition of God, reach after strange doctrines and introduce teachings of human institution; whom the Lord rebukes and chides in His Gospel, saying:
「You reject the commandment of God, that you may establish your own tradition.」 This crime is worse than that which the lapsed appear to have committed, who nevertheless, placed in penitence for their crime, beseech God with full satisfactions. There the Church is sought and entreated; here the Church is fought against. There there may have been compulsion; here the will is held fast in wickedness. There he who has lapsed harmed only himself; here he who has attempted to make a heresy or schism has deceived many by drawing them along with himself. There is the loss of one soul; here the peril of very many.
Certainly he who is here both understands that he has sinned, and laments and bewails it; but that other, swelling in his sin and pleasing himself in his very transgressions, separates the sons from their Mother, lures the sheep away from their shepherd, disrupts the sacraments of God. And whereas the lapsed has sinned but once, the other sins daily. Finally, the lapsed, having afterward attained martyrdom, may receive the promises of the kingdom; but the other, if he be slain outside the Church, cannot attain to the rewards of the Church. Nor let anyone wonder, dearly beloved brethren, that even some of the confessors proceed to such things, and that thence too certain ones commit sins so nefarious, so grievous.
For confession does not make one immune from the snares of the devil, nor does it defend one with perpetual security against temptations and dangers and the worldly assaults and onsets of one still placed in the world; otherwise we should never afterward see in the confessors the frauds and debaucheries and adulteries which we now, seeing them in certain men, groan over and grieve. Whoever that confessor be, he is not greater or better than Solomon, or dearer to God; and yet Solomon, so long as he walked in the ways of the Lord, retained the grace which he had received from the Lord, but after he forsook the way of the Lord, he lost also the grace of the Lord. And therefore it is written: 「Hold fast what you have, lest another receive your crown.」
And surely the Lord would not threaten that the crown of righteousness could be taken away, except that, when righteousness withdraws, the crown also must needs withdraw. Confession is the beginning of glory, not yet the merit of the crown; it does not perfect the praise, but initiates the dignity; and since it is written, 「He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved,」 whatever comes before the end is a step by which one ascends to the summit of salvation, not the boundary at which the very height of the pinnacle is already held. He is a confessor: but after confession the peril is greater, because the Adversary is the more provoked. He is a confessor: for this reason he ought all the more to stand with the Gospel of the Lord, since through the Gospel he has obtained glory from the Lord. To whom much is given, of him much is required.
And from him to whom more dignity is ascribed, more service is required of him. Let no one perish through a confessor's example; let no one learn injustice, no one insolence, no one treachery from a confessor's manners. He is a confessor: let him be humble and quiet, let him be modest in his conduct with discipline, so that he who is called Christ's confessor may imitate the Christ whom he confesses. For since He says, 'Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted,' and He Himself was exalted by the Father because the Word and Power and Wisdom of God the Father humbled Himself upon the earth, how can he love arrogance who has both commanded humility to us by His law and Himself received from the Father the most exalted name as the reward of humility? He is a confessor of Christ:
but only provided that the majesty and dignity of Christ be not afterward blasphemed through him. Let the tongue that has confessed Christ not be slanderous, not turbulent; let it not be heard clamoring with reproaches and quarrels; let it not, after words of praise, dart the serpent's venom against the brethren and the priests of God. But if he afterward proves blameworthy and detestable, if he squanders his confession by an evil way of life, if he stains his life with foul defilement, if at last, forsaking the Church wherein he was made a confessor and rending the concord of unity, he changes his first faith by a later treachery, he cannot flatter himself on account of his confession as though chosen for the reward of glory, since from this very thing the merits of punishment have rather increased.
For the Lord chose even Judas among the apostles, and yet Judas afterward betrayed the Lord. Nevertheless the firmness and faith of the apostles did not on that account fall, because the traitor Judas defected from their fellowship. So too here the holiness and dignity of the confessors was not at once diminished, because the faith of some was broken. The blessed apostle speaks in his epistle, saying: 'For what if some of them have fallen away from the faith? Has their unbelief made void the faith of God? God forbid: for God is true, but every man a liar.'
The greater and better part of the confessors stands firm in the strength of its faith and in the truth of the Lord's law and discipline; nor do they depart from the peace of the Church, those who remember that they obtained grace in the Church by God's gracious favor; and by this very thing they win fuller praise for their faith, in that, separated from the treachery of those who had been joined to them in the fellowship of confession, they withdrew from the contagion of the crime. Truly enlightened by the light of the Gospel, irradiated by the pure and shining light of the Lord, they are as praiseworthy in preserving the peace of Christ as they were victorious in the encounter with the devil.
Indeed I desire, most beloved brethren, and I likewise counsel and urge, that, if it can be done, none of the brethren perish, and that our rejoicing mother enfold in her bosom the one body of a consenting people. Yet if she cannot recall by wholesome counsel to the way of salvation certain leaders of schisms and authors of dissension who persist in blind and obstinate madness, may the rest at least—whether caught by simplicity, or led astray by error, or deceived by some cunning of a beguiling craft—loose yourselves from the snares of deceit, free your wandering steps from errors, and recognize the straight path of the heavenly way. It is the voice of the attesting apostle:
'We command you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from all brethren who walk disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us.' And again he says: 'Let no one deceive you with empty words: for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience. Be not therefore partakers with them.' One must withdraw from offenders, indeed must flee from them, lest while anyone joins himself to those who walk wickedly and proceeds along the paths of error and crime, straying from the way of the true road, he too be held bound by an equal guilt. There is one God, and one Christ, and one Church of His, and one faith, and one people joined by the glue of concord into a solid unity of body.
Unity cannot be cleft, nor can one body be parted by the sundering of its frame, nor torn into fragments with its entrails rent asunder. Whatever has departed from the parent stock will not be able to live and breathe apart; it loses the substance of salvation. The Holy Spirit warns us and says: 'What man is he that desires life and loves to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips that they speak no guile. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.' The son of peace ought to seek peace and pursue it; he who knows and loves the bond of charity ought to keep his tongue from the evil of dissension. Among His own divine commands and salutary teachings, the Lord, now near to His passion, added, saying:
'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.' This inheritance He gave us; all the gifts of His promise and the rewards He pledged in the keeping of peace. If we are heirs of Christ, let us abide in the peace of Christ; if we are sons of God, we ought to be peacemakers. 'Blessed,' He says, 'are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.' The sons of God must be peacemakers, gentle of heart, simple of speech, harmonious in affection, faithfully clinging to one another by the bonds of unanimity. This unanimity once existed under the apostles: thus the new people of believers, keeping the Lord's commands, held fast their charity. The Scripture proves it which says: 'And the multitude of those who had believed acted with one soul and one mind.' And again:
'And they all continued with one accord in prayer, together with the women and Mary who had been the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren.' And therefore they prayed with effectual prayers; therefore they could obtain with confidence whatever they asked of God's mercy. But in us unanimity has so dwindled that even the bounty of good works has been broken. In those days men sold their houses and farms, and laying up treasures for themselves in heaven, offered to the apostles the proceeds to be distributed for the use of the needy. But now we do not even give tithes from our patrimony, and whereas the Lord bids us sell, we rather buy and increase. So in us the vigor of faith has withered, so the strength of believers has grown faint. And on that account the Lord, looking upon our times, says in His Gospel:
'When the Son of Man comes, do you think He will find faith on the earth?' We see happening what He foretold. In the fear of God, in the law of righteousness, in love, in good works, there is no faith. No one ponders the dread of things to come; no one considers the day of the Lord and the wrath of God and the punishments to come upon the unbelieving and the eternal torments appointed for the faithless. Whatever our conscience would fear if it believed—because it does not believe, it does not fear at all. But if it believed, it would also beware; if it took heed, it would also escape. Let us rouse ourselves as much as we can, most beloved brethren, and breaking off the sleep of our old sloth, let us watch to observe and perform the Lord's precepts. Let us be such as He Himself commanded us to be, saying:
'Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and you yourselves like men who wait for their lord, when he shall return from the wedding, so that when he comes and knocks, they may open to him. Blessed are those servants whom the Lord at His coming shall find watching.' We ought to be girded, lest when the day of our marching forth comes, it find us hampered and entangled. Let our light shine in good works and gleam, so that it may lead us out of this night of the world into the light of eternal brightness. Let us always, anxious and wary, await the sudden coming of the Lord, so that when He knocks, our faith may keep watch and receive from the Lord the reward of vigilance. If these commands are kept, if these admonitions and precepts are held fast,